


All Their Little Failings

by emynii, ObliObla



Series: Nia & Obli's Whumptober 2019 [18]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Depression, Existential Angst, Existential Crisis, Gen, Heaven, Hell, Lucifer Bingo 2019 (Lucifer TV), Post-Season/Series 04, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 15:46:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21101957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emynii/pseuds/emynii, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla
Summary: There was nothing in him that was not corrupt. He had always believed it, but now he had proof.For the Whumptober prompt: muffled screamFor the Lucifer Bingo prompt: Mea Culpa





	All Their Little Failings

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warnings are in the end notes.
> 
> LINDA: God cast you out because He needed you to do the most difficult of jobs. It was a gift.  
LUCIFER: Gift? He shunned me. He vilified me. He made me a torturer! Can you even begin to fathom what it was like? Eons spent providing a place for dead mortals to punish themselves? I mean, why do they blame me for all their little failings?  
—Lucifer, Favorite Son
> 
> FAUSTUS. Stay, Mephistophilis, and tell me, what good will my soul do thy lord?  
MEPHISTOPHILIS: Enlarge his kingdom.  
FAUSTUS. Is that the reason why he tempts us thus?  
MEPHISTOPHILIS: Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris. (misery loves company)  
—The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

And so it was that Lucifer returned to Hell, there to dwell in fire, though at least he was no longer chained. The ash was ever falling, and the eternal night was long.

But he was not alone down in the dark.

Amenadiel would visit when he was able—which wasn’t often—to provide tales of the humans, Mazikeen, and Charlie. And to share what he had gleaned from his research on the problem of Hell.

“We’re all working on it, Luci,” he assured him, granting him one of his signature earnest grins. “I even went to Heaven to scour their libraries.”

And when Amenadiel left again, Lucifer would watch him go, not truly believing a solution would ever be found, but willing, at least, to try.

He was dusting off his hands as he emerged from a particularly noxious soul’s loop, pleased with the results but bored by the endless tedium of billions of souls.

“Luci!” And Amenadiel was landing in front of him, that earnest grin back on his face. “Luci, I have good news.  _ Great _ news!”

Lucifer blinked. “Really?” He had started to lose what little hope he had.

“Yes,  _ yes! _ You see, I was reading a—”

“To the  _ point, _ please, brother.” His impatience was borne of far too many years in darkness.

Amenadiel laid his hand on Lucifer’s shoulder. “Hell was designed for  _ you.” _

“What?”

“This was always your destiny.”

There was cotton in Lucifer’s ears, darkness eating at the edges of his vision. He could see the throne room, could see Samael, so full of faith, asking for more than he’d been given. Could see his Father, granting him his wish, but turning his purpose wanton and cruel. Could feel the blood and ash on his hands, consigning beasts to His prison. Could taste the  _ no _ on his lips when he’d finally had enough.

Denial, rebellion, fall—had it all been for nothing?

“I…” He swallowed roughly. “Amenadiel, I—”

“And you have control over it.”

The words broke Lucifer from his trance. “I,  _ what?” _

If anything, Amenadiel’s smile grew wider. “Hell must have a king, must have an angel on the throne because it is  _ powered  _ by divinity. Powered by  _ your _ divinity. Which means... you control it.”

“I don’t—  _ How?” _ How could he possibly be in control of it? It had taken eons to assert his sovereignty. Power in Hell never came easily.

“Self-actualization!” And Amenadiel’s grin turned smug. “It was the crux of the whole thing. As you feel, so Hell becomes.”

“But-but that means…”

“That means all of this”—he gestured at the doors, the twisted pathways, the dark and ashen sky—”can be fixed! Can achieve its  _ true _ purpose—to rehabilitate. To  _ save.” _

The ground was crumbling beneath Lucifer’s feet. That meant...that meant…

It was his fault.

Every torment of Hell, every horror ever inflicted on a soul, on a demon, on  _ himself… _ He had caused it. He had called it  _ all. _

Amenadiel’s smile fell. “Are you…?”

“I’m fine,” Lucifer said blankly. Amenadiel wouldn’t understand,  _ couldn’t _ understand. He thought this was a  _ good _ thing. Thought himself the blessed evangelist come down to spread the word to his errant brother. Didn’t know that all the hope Lucifer had left was turning to ashes in his mouth.

We’ll be in touch, brother. But this is  _ good!” _ Amenadiel said before he flew away, so assured of the sweetness of his message, but there was only bitterness left.

Lucifer looked at this place called Hell, at this place  _ he _ had created. At the cruelty of it, the pain. At every soul he hadn’t wanted to hurt, but they’d asked for it.  _ Demanded _ it of him. At every soul he  _ had _ wanted to hurt. He’d told himself it was just a job. He didn’t create Hell, after all, he just worked there.

But now?

A scream was torn from deep within him, one borne of a guilt that ravaged his heart and rent his flesh, and he brought his hands up, trying to muffle it. Failing. He staggered, barely managing to hold himself up. Nausea rose, and he didn’t have the energy to press it down, letting all the bile within him out in heaves that wracked his body. He wished it would purge him of his poison, but he  _ was _ poison. Every part of him. There was nothing in him that was not corrupt. He had always believed it, but now he had proof.

Because if he was Hell and Hell was  _ this— _ what sort of a creature was he that the worst place in the universe was his mirror?

* * *

“Goddammit! I told him not to tell you like that.” Linda was pacing anxiously around the coffee table in her office.

Lucifer sat, hunched on the couch, fingernails digging into his knees. “Why on  _ earth _ would you not want him to tell me?” He sounded like he was falling apart; he could only commend himself for not sounding worse. He’d barely managed to bring himself under control enough to fly, crashing through dimensions to slam into the cushions in a pile of feathers and panic.

Linda sank into her chair, burying her head in her hands for a moment before she looked back up at him.”Because I knew how you'd take this. You should have had a support system in place.”

“Well, I’m  _ here, _ aren’t I?” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice; he wasn’t sure he cared anymore.

“Yes, and that’s  _ excellent, _ Lucifer. But—”

He shook his head sharply. “No, no it wouldn’t have mattered.”

“Lucifer…”

“How am I supposed to  _ accept _ this, however I learned about it? This is...this is…” He was stammering. He leapt to his feet, hands coming up to clench in his hair. He couldn’t—

“We can work through it just like everything else,” Linda said, reasonably.

“Doctor, you don’t  _ understand!” _ He turned to her, feeling his body shake, unable to stop it. Unable to stop  _ anything. _

“Then explain it to me,” she said, still so reasonable, as if there  _ was  _ reason to the universe. As if  _ anything _ could matter, now.

His hands clenched into fists, fingernails cutting against his palm. “I lit the fires that haunt humanity’s nightmares.  _ I _ damned the guilty to an eternity of punishment without a chance at redemption. I…” He blinked. He couldn’t make the words stop. “I tempted Eve in the garden. They-they were expelled from paradise. I condemned humanity to pain and loss and—”

“Lucifer, none of that is your fault!”

He shook his head, forcing a smile onto his face, feeling it cut across his flesh. “But don’t you see, Doctor? I  _ am _ responsible. For  _ all  _ of it. From the very beginning.”

Linda inhaled sharply. 

“No one forced my hand. I chose rebellion. I  _ chose _ war. Me. No one else. So  _ everything _ since then…” He cleared his throat; his cheeks were wet, but he refused to think about it. “I deserve the blame.”

He remembered his siblings, turning them, whispering his poison into their ears. Remembered the moments after the final battle, chained, forced to kneel before Michael. He remembered the sword as it pierced through, under his ribs, remembered as Father and Mother turned away. Remembered his terror as he fell. And fell. And fell.

All of it…  _ planned. _ He had never truly had a choice. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. He chuckled bitterly, and Linda asked him something, but he couldn’t parse the words. He had lit the stars, set vast clouds of baser elements aflame. But he’d never burned before. Hellfire had scorched his very soul before he managed to pull himself from that maelstrom. And there, among the ashes and flames, he built his kingdom. 

And it was  _ his _ kingdom—it always had been.

Linda reached for him, now, trying to draw him back to reality, but even the agony of the fall was less torturous than the wrenching ache the present brought him, and he flinched away.

“My pain made the walls…” Had he been speaking the whole time? He had never told anyone this much, but he couldn’t bring himself to give a damn. “My fear made the cells, my sorrow the doors. All the torture, all the punishment… it came from me. I  _ caused _ it.”

“Lucifer,  _ please.” _ Linda was crying—another thing he’d ruined. But not from sadness. There was fear there, something he knew all too well, and he forced himself to focus. 

He was standing over her, and he could feel his eyes blazing. She shivered and cowered as he loomed, horror he had only seen in her when he’d first revealed himself painted across her face.

“Linda, what…?”

But as he stepped forward, she pressed herself further back into her chair. He froze, frowning. She was staring at something past his shoulder. His gaze drifted—slowly, as if he were in a trance—from her terrified face to where she was looking. His wings were splayed out behind him, trembling.The coffee table was broken in half, glass shattered. The books behind her were in disarray, knocked to the floor.

“No. No, Linda, I didn’t—”

There were gouges in the arms of her chair; her lip was trembling.

He stared down at his hands. It was as he’d always known—everything he touched he destroyed. He couldn’t let his corruption despoil anything else. As he flew away, he thought he might have heard his name, but he must have been imagining things.

* * *

“So, that’s  _ it, _ is it?” Lucifer shouted from his balcony, bottle in hand. He’d never found anywhere more effective for yelling at his Father. He took another drink and glared up at the sky. “I mean, I knew the cosmos was a joke, but I didn’t know it was all on  _ me!” _

He laughed, toasted the sky, and drained the bottle, throwing it behind him. Somewhere, it shattered. “It’s hilarious, really. Every fear I ever had realized—such a  _ great _ punch line.”

He sighed, wishing he could see the stars through the light pollution, but knowing it would only make things worse. "How dare you?” he asked a little weakly, but anger had always been easier than sorrow, and what did it matter, now, to give into it?

“How  _ dare  _ you put this on me and say  _ nothing! _ What kind of sick, sadistic  _ bastard  _ would allow this to continue?" He laughed, again, and it sounded a little deranged even to his own ears.  _ Good, _ he thought. Derangement seemed the appropriate response. "You know, I always knew you were a manipulative arse, but I never realized exactly how deep the cruelty ran."

He shook his head. “And they call  _ me _ the cruel one.” But then he remembered, and all his self-righteousness died. When he spoke again, he knew he was pleading, but he didn’t have anything else left.

"Are you so hellbent on punishing me that you would drag humanity through damnation just to teach me a lesson? Or am I, once again, the vessel for  _ your  _ dirty work? Which is it?”

He settled to the ground, back against the glass. “And does it even matter?”

The marble was cold under his body. He knew his Father wasn’t listening—or didn’t care—but he couldn’t seem to make himself stop. If he was poison, the words were all the venom he had left to spit.

“Do...do you want me to beg peace?” he asked. “What would appease you?”

There was no answer, still. Again.  _ Always. _

He hissed out a breath. “Was...was there anything I could have done?”

And there was silence, broken only by the sound of his own breathing.

“Lucifer?”

_ No, it couldn’t be… _

“Linda called. She… said you were upset?”

Maybe he was hearing things. Hallucinations would hardly be the strangest development. Surely, Linda wouldn’t have sent the Det—

And then she was there, in front of him, like an angel descending from the clouds. He wondered if she really had come to destroy him, like Sodom, or maybe like a cataclysmic flood sent to restore him to some antediluvian state that didn’t exist.

_ “Chloe,” _ he choked out.

At the sight of him, it seemed, her eyes filled with tears, and every drop down her cheeks was a dagger to his heart. “I-I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

He stood, no longer able to contain his agitation. “You shouldn’t be here.”

She frowned. “Lucifer, I—”

_ “I _ shouldn’t be here. I should…” He blinked. He was poison. He was  _ poison; _ he shouldn’t be inflicting himself on others like this. 

_ Selfish, _ the voices whispered.

Chloe took a step closer. “Whatever’s happened, we can deal with it, okay?”

He shook his head. “No, no, I  _ can’t. _ Some things…” He took a deep breath, feeling it shudder past his lips. “Some things can’t be fixed.”

“I don’t believe that.” And she was so close he could smell the sweetness of her shampoo, so close all he had to do was reach out to touch her. But he was poison, so his hands stayed at his sides.

Or… would have, but Chloe was reaching out herself, taking his hands in hers, looking up at him with so much hope flickering in her eyes. “Tell me what’s wrong,” she whispered.

And he did, however half-haltingly, however brokenly. 

And she listened, patient as a saint—and he should know; he’d met several—never judging, only heeding his words, a glorious, terrible  _ understanding _ on her face.

“I’m sorry,” was all she said, pressing her face against his chest as he tried desperately to comfort her in return. He could see the pain etched into the corners of her eyes, could see how she was burying it for his sake, and all he wanted was to be worthy of it.

So he assured her, and it wasn’t a lie. Assured her he would fix Hell and that would be enough to assuage his guilt. That he would return to her, truly, properly. After all, she’d say, he hadn’t known. He hadn’t known, so it wasn’t his fault.

He wanted to believe her.

He wanted to believe he could do this.

* * *

He couldn’t do this.

_ Everything _ Lucifer tried failed. It didn’t matter whether the souls were sinners, whether they were saints. All that mattered was their guilt—but how was he supposed to save them when he didn’t even know how to save himself?

Chloe had told him he needed to forgive himself. Needed to accept that not everything was his fault. But it was. It all was.

Things had seemed so much easier when she was with him.

Amenadiel visited less and less as Lucifer’s desolation grew, no longer able to meet despair with earnestness. None of his solutions worked, either. None of them could.

Lucifer couldn’t leave Hell, not for long enough, at least, but he couldn’t heal while he was still there. And he couldn’t heal quickly enough. It had taken  _ years _ for him to strip away the finest edge of defense mechanisms. How was he supposed to fix himself in the place that held so much of his pain?

He began praying to every angel he knew the name of. Surely one of them would believe him. Surely  _ one _ of them would be willing to help.

But no one came. No one cared. Not for him, not for the billions of damned souls condemned alongside him. He had always been the bearer of his Father’s failures. And he was damned to be the bearer of his own. And his burdens were far too heavy.

When he watched demons scramble for what joy they could claim from the ruined landscape, it filled him only with sorrow. He no longer felt any fulfillment in delivering punishment to doomed souls. Every rattle of their cell doors pierced through him as surely as Michael’s sword.

Even as he walked the endless passageways, he saw his very paces bring further corruption. It seemed every attempt at help only harmed, every mercy only a further cruelty. Love turned inexorably to hate.

And so he found a different door, one that called to him, still, heightening the constant cacophony of voices. He had turned away so many times from this door, from its draw like fangs of guilt pressed against his throat. But he almost felt relief as he pressed the door open, stepping through into his penthouse.

Uriel was sitting at the piano, picking a melody from the keys, and Lucifer smiled, already pulling Azrael’s blade out of the air.

Here, at least, he couldn’t hurt anything else.

Here, maybe, there would be penance.

* * *

The pain wasn’t going to stop.

No matter how many times Lucifer killed Uriel, no matter how many times the hell loop twisted and changed, drawing in yet further moments to torture him with, the agony did not abate.

And of  _ course _ it didn’t. Hell was perfectly designed to maximize torment. Rehabilitation was patently impossible. It was how it’d been created.

It was how he’d created it.

There was no blessed relief after the pain, no sense of purification or mortification, simply more torture, more torment, more pain.

It was unrelenting, except for when cessation only sharpened the horror. It was a perfect system of punishment. He remembered when he had almost felt proud of it.

And so he was punished, and he was punished again. And this was what he wanted, but that knowledge—like all things—only made it hurt more.

After an interminable amount of time that echoed with the savor of eternity—and he, above all things, knew how it tasted—he found himself yet again in the worst torment of all. 

He stood before a massive window, vast enough to see the entirety of Hell, to see every cruelty inflicted—and he knew he was the cause of them all.

“Why do you let us suffer?” a soul asked, flesh burning ceaselessly. 

“What did we do to deserve this?” another wailed before it was dragged beneath the surface of the wastelands. 

“Lucifer...” And this was a voice he knew, though the face was obscured by rot and decay. “Why did you let this happen to me?”

“No,  _ no! _ Linda is  _ not  _ dead,” he panted desperately.

She shook what remained of her head, dislodging maggots, putrefying lip quirking upward. “How would  _ you  _ know?”

And now the voice was Daniel’s, shouting, “This is your fault! Everything was fine before you came!”

And it was a lie, wasn’t it? But he couldn’t remember.

The jaw narrowed, body shrinking, and other remains glared at him with pestilential eyes.

“Miss Lopez, why are you...?”

“You could have told me it was all real. You could have told me to have  _ faith.” _

But faith could only turn to ashes, couldn’t it?

The body shifted again. “Lucifer, how could you?”

He blinked. “Charlotte... but you’re in Heaven. Amenadiel—“

“Oh, my darling boy. I know parents aren’t supposed to have favorites, but...”

“Mum?” And his voice was harsh with the tears running down his cheeks.

_ “You _ are why I was sent here in the first place!”

“I know,” he said softly.

The indistinct face shifted again. 

“Why?” Eve asked simply. “Why did you have to come into the garden?”

“I was lonely,” he whispered, but she shook her head.

“I was jealous,” he said, voice shaking. “I was angry. I wanted to break you like He broke me.”

“You did,” she said simply, and her rotting form disappeared in a pile of offal and corruption.

And out of the depths of that stinking flesh, came another. “Lucifer, what-what’s going on? Where am I?”

But he couldn’t speak. No, that was a lie. He  _ could  _ speak, but shame stopped his tongue.

“Why is it so dark? Why is...? Am-am I in Hell?” Chloe’s breathing quickened. She was so close on the other side of the glass he could reach out and touch her. 

And he did, pressing through the barrier, brushing her hair back with all the tenderness he could muster, with all the love left in his rotten heart. But at his touch her skin melted; under his fingertips the flesh sloughed off bone.

He desired, as he always did, when this moment came, for her to tell him she hated him, she cursed his name, but, as always, she simply wept.

“Please,” she said, voice wavering. “Please don’t hurt me.”

_ I wouldn’t, _ he wanted to say, he  _ always  _ wanted to say. But he couldn’t lie. Not to her. 

And then the glass shattered, shimmered, reformed, and it was a mirror—or something like it.

“We never could have won,” Samael said softly. “Even if we had succeeded, we never could have gotten what we truly wanted. That’s what desire  _ is.” _

“But...”

Samael shook his head. “We will never be satisfied with anything. We will  _ always  _ want more. And it will always be denied us.”

And Lucifer couldn’t deny it. Couldn’t deny the truth.

“Freedom doesn’t exist! You will always be beholden to someone.” Samael stepped forward until their faces were inches apart. “You will always be beholden to  _ Him.” _

“I—” Lucifer inhaled sharply. “I never had a choice. Not a real one.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Samael said, grinning.

“I was always damned.”

“From the very beginning.”

“But...” And Lucifer smiled, though it pained him. “I  _ do  _ have a choice.”

Samael scowled. “What are you talking about?”

But he was walking away, back through a thousand memories that tore at him, past the innumerable faces of those he’d wronged. Until he found the first loop he’d ever experienced.

And Uriel was there, playing piano, but Lucifer ignored him, reaching into the air and plucking a familiar knife from the air.

Azrael’s blade. 

It wasn’t real, of course. But maybe if he believed, if he had  _ faith. _ And this was the only thing he’d ever managed to have faith in.

Uriel approached, waiting to be murdered again—to be wiped from existence—but Lucifer turned away, flipping the knife in his hands, pressing the tip under his ribs, where Michael’s sword had cut so deeply. He did have a choice, he did have control after all, even in just this one thing. 

_ One deep cut... _

Lucifer awoke, and he was lying on the rough stone ground of a pathway of Hell, doors rattling all around him. Faith had failed him, as it always did. With Azrael’s blade lost to another world, there was only one way he could assure his self-destruction.

And it was not to be found in Hell, but in Heaven.

* * *

Unlike Hell, Heaven did have literal gates, though they were composed less of pearl than of light made solid. Glory incarnate.

The sight—and thought—of the gates had, at one time or another, filled Lucifer with rage, sorrow, dread, joy, longing, grief, and emotions he didn’t even have words for. 

Now it filled him with hope.

He alit on the nebulous ground outside the walls of the Silver City. He had not once returned here since being cast out. His mind had made a Hell of Heaven as effectively as it hadn’t made a Heaven of Hell. 

And he knew Uriel had once manned the gates.

But now, instead of his becoatted brother, who he’d never see again, there was another—taller, more youthful in appearance, with reddish-blond hair, freckles, and the same overly knowing countenance.

Phanuel.

“Hello, murderer,” Phanuel greeted, and Lucifer immediately froze.

He swallowed roughly. “I...”

“You know,  _ Uriel?” _ Phanuel said with a sneer. “Or have you already so forgotten your sins that you would dare show your face here?”

Uriel had been Phanuel’s favorite brother, Lucifer remembered now. He saw Uriel’s lightless eyes as he’d buried him, beneath the canopy of a tree, beneath Heaven’s sky.

Guilt overwhelmed hope. “Phanuel, brother, I—“

“Don’t call me that, slanderer,” Phanuel hissed. “You are no angel.”

Lucifer hung his head. He was too tired for anger, now, but it had sustained him so long he didn’t know what else there was without it. “I’m not here to start a fight. I don’t want—“

“Why should I care what you want?” Phanuel asked harshly. “You are not allowed.”

A spark of rage kindled inside him, but he only sighed. “I do not wish to enter the city.” Was that a lie? He didn’t even know anymore.

Phanuel’s lip curled. “Then why are you here, to beg?”

_ Yes, _ his brain whispered. To promise anything, to  _ do  _ anything for the sweet relief of oblivion. But he could not speak the words, and what he said was, “To speak with Father.”

And Phanuel laughed, so hard he was forced to cling to the bars to keep from falling over. “Why would my Father  _ ever  _ wish to speak with you?”

The embers caught, and wrath rose. Lucifer darted forward, wrapping his fingers around Phanuel’s wrists, pulling him hard against the bars of the gate even as the light burned his skin.

“Because I am the keeper of his sins and his punishments, and he  _ will  _ answer to both.” It was a cutting line, one he would normally be proud of.

Pride had always been his downfall, and powerful words had never truly covered up his weakness.

“What are you going to do, destroy me as you destroyed Uriel?” Phanuel asked through gritted teeth. “It doesn’t matter. You still won’t ever get  _ what you desire.” _

His words turned mocking, and Lucifer wasn’t the monster in the dark who had terrified humanity for millennia—a cruel position, certainly, but one that commanded respect. No, he was nothing but a fool, a jester who tried to show that the emperor had no clothes and found himself outcast and starving beyond the gates. 

Beyond  _ these  _ gates. 

Father had not deigned to grant him an audience when he was cast down—why should he ever have thought he would do so now?

He dropped Phanuel and staggered back. Phanuel coughed, straightened, and fixed Lucifer with a cruel eye that was, he knew, all he deserved.

“Leave,” he said, already turning away. “You are not wanted.”

And Lucifer was left outside the gates, alone, looking in on light and warmth and feeling none of it.

* * *

Thus conscious did make a coward of him, as it always had—caught between choices he'd forced himself to believe were real, striving for them only to find them specious.

Returned to Hell, surrounded by the evidence of his lack of freedom, he found himself standing at the banks of the Lethe, looking out over its intoxicating waters. It would wash away everything he knew, everything he  _ was _ —every drop of venom sanctified, every jagged edge smoothed.

And with his poisonous psyche purged, the killing fields would be fields of asphodel, perhaps, where none would know what manner of being they had been, but so too would they be saved from the torment of their lives.

It would not be a place of rehabilitation—he could not provide that—but it would be a place without doubt, without grief, without guilt, without fear.

Without pain—and pain, now, was all he could feel.

He did not hesitate as he stepped into the cool, numbing waters, face uplifted toward the stars, toward the Heavens, and prepared to feel nothing at all. How glorious it would be to no longer have to  _ be. _

The mist drifted around him as the water rose to his knees, his thighs, his waist—until he could fall to his knees, slowly and gracefully as a dying man proposing unholy matrimony to the Lady Death. A baptism sweeter than fire, gentler than blood, and so much more indelible than any River Jordan. The water flowed over his head, and he let his mouth fall open, tasting the echo of memory as it slowly dissipated.

And all was still as a kinder grave.

But when he reached the surface, gasping with the ecstasy of a far grander death, he was denied his pleasure. No memories were lost; no agony was relieved. This was no panacea to take away his pain.

Lost to impure delirium, he struck out at the river, at himself, at the voices that never stopped screaming their malevolence, staggering through the water until he could no longer stand, sinking back to his knees in the shallows, chains no longer needed to keep him down.

He clutched two fistfuls of his hair, rocking back and forth. “Why are you doing this?” he shouted.

But he knew it wasn’t God, not Heaven, not anyone but himself. It was his fault. It always had been.

He understood, now, that he had never had choice, had never had freedom. And he still didn’t. Even oblivion had been denied him. Even death. 

The only choice—if it could be called a choice at all—was to keep going. But he couldn’t do that, either.

So what was left?

* * *

_ When souls cast themselves down with their own guilt, they land in the center of Hell, in the shadow of the great throne—the highest point in damnation. They are afraid, of course, are lost and, often, look up to a sky without sun or stars, a sky swirling with ash and darkness. _

_ And they see, at the top of that twisting stone tower, a figure, sitting on that throne. “Is this the king of this place?” they whisper to themselves who still has composure enough to speak. And some, fraught with revelations they will never truly stop fighting, ask, “Is this the lord of Hell?” _

_ But it’s just a statue, they realize. Nothing living could be so still for so long. Though in the eyes there is something terrible, an abyss of despair one may well lose themselves to. _

_ Eons pass and souls still fall, still look up, still whisper, still ask, “Is this the lord of Hell?” And there is no answer for them. _

_ But if one were to climb, high above the doors, the passageways, the wastelands, and alight on the edge of the great throne to look into the depths of the statue’s ancient, desolate eyes… _

_ They might, on occasion, see it blink. _

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warnings: Suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, putrefaction


End file.
